Faritsu’s Inspirations: The Magic Potion and Soda Sweatshirts

I remember visiting a Versace Couture boutique in Scotland in my teenage years and one particular Aloha aka ‘Hawaiian’ shirt caught my attention.  This bold and lively piece was embellished in ‘Cola’ bottles, although my memory fails me in how exactly these were attached to the shirt.  However, one thing was for sure; the concept of soda bottles appliqued to fabric stuck with me – Thank You Versace! 

This inspiration fuelled our vision to create playful pieces using bottle appliques.  However the question being, how exactly…?

The Original Concept:  Coloured Liquid-Filled ‘Bottle’ Appliques

Foolish, but we really wanted to make this happen.  So, we got working through the various technical challenges this presented us with:

1. 1. What material do we use for the bottles?  And how do we construct these?  Hand or machine-made?
   2. What about the thickness of the material?
   3. How do we fill the bottles?  And with what?  And yes, how do we seal the bottles once filled?
   4. How do we attach the bottles to the garment?

We created various hand-made prototypes and thought we were nearly there…however, we felt the liquid-filled concept still needed more work to be a safe and viable option – despite being very close.  Saying that, we have not given up on liquid-filled appliques and watch the space for the next collection!

The Final Concept:  Coloured Glass Microbead-Filled ‘Bottle’ Appliques

After much deliberation, we decided to use a safer medium to fill our bottles: coloured glass microbeads.  We landed on utilising flexible transparent PVC sheet for the bottles, which were ultrasonically welded using bottle-shaped dies.  We then hand-filled the bottles with microbeads, hot-sealed and sewed onto the sweatshirts.  For the bottle caps, we used soft enamel and epoxy pieces, stamped using a shaped-die in silver metal, red and yellow colourings. 

The ‘Soda and Magic Potion’ sweatshirts were now alive.  Following our most technically challenging garment thus far; we loved the results; bright, soft, shiny and flexible appliques on contrasting colours.  The appliques are a joy to touch and feel against beautiful French Terry cotton. 

Experience our truly unique creations: 

The Magic Potion – Faritsu

The Soda Sweatshirt – Faritsu

We would love to hear from fellow leisurewear fashion creators, designers and consumers on unique and interesting creation journeys you have been on and garments you have encountered.  Please share your stories with us as we work towards building a forum for our community of creative casualwear enthusiasts – just post a comment below!